


this love is glowing in the dark

by pathstotread



Category: A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 11:52:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14019648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathstotread/pseuds/pathstotread
Summary: "On the night that Alex returns, after Meg has retrieved him from hell and brought him home, they all camp out in the family room, as if by some unspoken agreement that no one sleeps alone or lets Alex out of their sight."Kate and Alex, after.





	this love is glowing in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I know that this is a kid's movie, but if you didn't want me to write fic about the parents, you really should have cast less attractive people, AVA.
> 
> Thanks to Anj and Jo and all the other Twitter folks who encouraged this mess. Be kind, I haven't posted fic in straight up four years. Less sexy than the rating might suggest, but I erred on the side of caution because, y'know, kid's movie.
> 
> Title, of course, from "This Love" by Taylor Swift.

The kids think Kate doesn’t know about all the sleepless nights over the years, the warm milk and conversations at two in the morning that have been happening ever since Charles Wallace was tall enough and clever enough to reach the stove top. Kate knows all about it, having more than once heard Meg creep down from the attic. She doesn’t scold them because she knows they find solace in each other; she doesn’t join them because she’s not sure how much comfort she can provide when her guard is down, when she misses Alex so much it feels like a physical ache. She’s never wanted to add to her children’s grief, so she lets them have their rituals and she has hers, staring at the ceiling and praying - to whom, she really can’t say - for daybreak to come.

\--

On the night that Alex returns, after Meg has retrieved him from hell and brought him home, they all camp out in the family room, as if by some unspoken agreement that no one sleeps alone or lets Alex out of their sight.

It happens in stages. Meg falls asleep first; Kate’s heart swells to see her daughter looking peaceful for the first time in years, after all of those nights.

Alex is next. She watches him valiantly try to stay awake, asking Charles Wallace questions about school, unwilling to miss a moment with his family after so long apart. But the exhaustion of the day - of the past four years - takes him eventually, and he drops off with his head tilted back against the cushions and Meg’s feet in his lap.

When Kate tells Charles Wallace it’s time for bed, she is unsurprised when he simply drops a pillow onto the floor right below Meg and promptly falls asleep with his back to her, ever his sister’s protector.

Kate walks around the first level, checking the locks and turning out the lights. Returning to her family, she curls up under Alex’s outstretched arm, leaning her head on his shoulder and staring up at his sleeping face, now illuminated only by the dim glow of the streetlights. She watches him for what feels like hours, but could be minutes or seconds; she’s afraid to blink, almost afraid to breathe.

\--

She’s not sure when she falls asleep, but some time later she jerks awake to find Meg and Charles Wallace right where they’d been and an empty space in the middle of the couch. A blind panic claws its way up her throat - _no no no no no_ \- as her eyes dart around the dark room for evidence that he’s still here, that it hadn’t been a particularly vivid and cruel dream.

Spotting a light through the window, she runs for the back door and throws it open to find Alex standing in the doorway of his lab, staring blankly into the space.

“Alex,” she gasps, her breathing coming in short, staccato bursts as he turns to her.

“Kate? What’s wrong? Is it the kids?”

“I woke up, and you were gone, and-” she takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm her thundering pulse. “You can’t do that, Alex. Not yet.” She shakily raises a hand to her hair. “Maybe not ever.”

Alex gathers her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he says, his face tucked into her hair. “I wasn’t thinking, I just woke up and felt like I needed to see this place, and - God, Kate, I’m sorry.”

And suddenly she’s crying, small, muffled sobs into the fabric of his shirt. She’s spent so much time trying not to cry in front of the kids that it feels wrong, somehow, to let it out now. But it also feels like a relief, like a breath she’s been holding for too long that she’s finally able to expel.

“I will never leave you again,” Alex says forcefully, his arms strong and sure around her.

“You didn’t mean to leave the first time,” she sniffles, raising her face to his.

“No, but I _did_ leave. I left you and the kids for _years_ , and I have to live with that for the rest of my life.” He hates himself for it; she can see it in his eyes and it breaks her heart anew.

She kisses him softly, quickly, wanting to ease some of the pain, if she can. “Katie,” he whispers, touching his forehead to hers.

He hasn’t called her Katie in years, since well before he left; he doesn’t believe in pet names and tends to reserve nicknames for the kids. She’d called him _babe_ , once upon a time; now she just wants to say his name in a litany, _Alex, Alex, Alex_ , because he’s here, and he’s whole, and she hadn't been entirely sure either of those things would ever be true again.

They spend the next few hours on the floor of his lab, the one she hasn’t been able to bring herself to change. She’d like to say it’s because she never really lost hope - and she had been _right_ , she thinks fiercely - but it’s also because it would have felt like admitting defeat, accepting that he was never coming back.

So they sit in the spot where he’d vanished four years ago, their legs outstretched next to each other and his fingers tracing patterns on her palm. Kate tells him about their brilliant son, their brave daughter, her work, and everything she can possibly think of that he’s missed. Alex laughs when she tells him about her misadventures making snacks for the PTA and how she’d set up double blind taste testing because she was not going to have anyone talking shit about her cookies, or, by proxy, her family. 

He cries silently when she tells him about Meg’s sleepless nights, Charles Wallace’s remedies, the troubles they’ve had at school. He’s dry eyed by the time he tells her about Camazotz, about the relentless, pulsing attempts to crack open his skull and inhabit his mind; Kate, however, starts crying again, big, gasping sobs for what he’s been through, the years he’s spent alone. She’d had the children, at least. He’d had nothing but himself and his love for them keeping him halfway sane. But that’s her Alex, she thinks; boundless love and tireless conviction.

\--

Just before dawn, she rises to her feet. “Come on,” she says, holding her hand out to him. “Come to bed.” 

They creep inside and glance over to check on the kids, still sleeping soundly in the family room. “Wait,” Alex says, and she watches him scribble a note - _We’re upstairs, Love, Dad_ \- on a scratch piece of paper and tiptoe over to tuck it into Meg’s hand. “Learned my lesson,” he says ruefully.

Kate grips his hand as they climb the stairs, glancing back every few seconds to see him there, his gaze intent on her. She closes the bedroom door behind them and locks it. “Kids,” she explains. He nods, and for a moment they just look at each other. She’s overtaken by a bout of nervousness, suddenly worrying about stupid things like when, exactly, she’d last shaved her legs.

Alex lets out a bark of laughter and she realizes she’s said that out loud. “God, I’ve missed you so much,” he says fervently as he reaches for her, and she’s not nervous anymore.

They shed their clothes in between slow, dreamy touches and kisses. She traces her hands over his chest; he’s thinner than she remembers, but otherwise unscarred, at least physically. When she unbuttons her shirt and lets it fall to the floor, Alex looks at her like a starving man in the desert, and it’s her turn to laugh at him. 

The light brightens gradually from gray to pink as he tips her down onto her bed - _theirs_ , she thinks, it’s theirs again - and kneels between her legs as if in prayer, kissing across her clavicle, down the slope of her breast, across the plane of her belly. He brings her to the edge with his hands, his mouth, the slight scrape of his beard against the inside of her thigh, and she cries out his name, her hands in his overlong hair.

When he finally, finally climbs up and covers her body with his, the light shifts again, the rising sun bathing the room in gold. He shudders in her arms with his release; she tightens her grip and dares God, or the universe, or whoever might be listening to try and take him from her again.

\--

Not an hour later, she’s dozing on his chest when she hears the telltale creak of the stairs and Meg and Charles Wallace whispering to each other in the hallway.

Kate stirs, moving to swing her legs over the side of the bed, but Alex pins her back down, kissing her thoroughly. “I got it,” he says. “You stay, get some sleep.”

“What about you?” she asks, watching him hop into a pair of jeans.

His grin is blinding. “I’m going to make pancakes for my kids.”

“Alex,” she says as he turns to leave. “Come back to me?”

He bends down to kiss her again, his expression fierce and loving in equal measure. “Always,” he promises.

She sleeps better than she has in years.

_end_


End file.
